Venezuela’s Machado calls on international community to increase pressure on Maduro – The Yeshiva World

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado vowed on Thursday to keep up the pressure on President Nicolás Maduro to remove him from power in January.

She also urged the international community to take action and immediately recognize her party’s presidential candidate as the winner of the July election and introduced measures to hold government officials accountable for abuses that occurred after the election.

Machado, speaking to reporters online from an undisclosed location in Venezuela, reiterated her commitment to negotiate incentives and guarantees that can lead to a peaceful transfer of power.

“We, the Venezuelan people, have done everything,” she said. “We have competed with the rules of tyranny … and we have won, and we have proven it. So, if the world or any government considers looking the other way, imagine where sovereign will and popular sovereignty would end up in the Western world. It would mean that elections are worthless.”

Her comments came three days after the country’s judicial system, which is loyal to the ruling party, issued an arrest warrant for former diplomat Edmundo González, who represented the main opposition coalition in the July 28 election.

While the National Electoral Council—packed with ruling party supporters—declared Maduro the winner, it never released voting results to support its claim. The opposition coalition, however, claimed that González defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin, offering as proof voting results from more than 80% of the electronic voting machines used in the election.

Thousands of people, including minors, took to the streets across Venezuela hours after the electoral council’s announcement. The protests were largely peaceful, but demonstrators also toppled statues of Maduro’s predecessor, the late leader Hugo Chávez, threw rocks at police officers and buildings, and burned police motorcycles and government propaganda.

Maduro’s government responded to the demonstrations with full force. A report Wednesday by Human Rights Watch found that state security forces and gangs affiliated with the ruling party were responsible for some of the 24 deaths during the protests.

“They know no bounds in their cruelty,” Machado told reporters on Thursday.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday condemned González’s “unjustified arrest warrant,” characterizing it as “yet another example of Mr. Maduro’s efforts to maintain power through violence.” Kirby said the U.S. is considering a range of options to show Maduro and his allies that “their actions in Venezuela will have consequences.”

Under the Biden administration, the Venezuelan government has received various forms of economic relief from the economic sanctions the U.S. imposed over the years to topple Maduro. Some of the relief was terminated earlier this year as the government stepped up repression against opposition figures, civil society and others it sees as opponents.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, insisted Thursday that his office requested the injunction because González, 75, failed to appear three times to answer questions in a criminal investigation into the online publication of the counting lists obtained by the opposition. Saab told reporters that the publication is a power grab exclusive to the National Electoral Council and claimed that the opposition’s voting data is false.

“You shared the website on your (social media) networks,” Saab said, referring to González. “Explain why you shared it if it is false.”

Saab’s claim contradicts experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which observed the election at the invitation of Maduro’s government and subsequently determined that the results announced by electoral authorities were not credible. In a statement critical of the election, the UN experts declined to validate the opposition’s claim of victory, but said the faction’s voting data posted online appeared to have all the original security features.

(AP)